Books Read in 2009

A Few Good Books for 2010

Some writers who contributed to What Matters Now have new books coming out in 2010. I am interested in three of them - managing attention (Inbox Zero), finding meaning (Evil Plans), and understanding marriage (Committed). So why do I want to read them?

1. Inbox Zero

This is the first book by Merlin Mann, creator of the popular 43 Folders. He gave a talk of the same title in July 2007, which delved into strategies for managing a high volume of incessant emails. The Inbox Zero talk connected with many folks (including yours truly), going by viewership figures of the online video (57,000+ views on YouTube) and slides (135,000+ views on SlideShare).

The book will dig deeper beneath the how-to tips and tricks - there is a larger metaphor in there that can be mined to deal with whatever internal or external distraction, craving, or whim that we face as we strive to do good work.

2. Evil Plans
(Update on 5 January 2010: The book will only be out in January 2011.)

This is the second book of Hugh MacLeod, a web-savvy cartoonist who blogs at Gapingvoid. He wants to convince readers that the great divide can be bridged. Earning a living and doing what you love can be one and the same thing.

What if what you love doing is drawing or dancing? Frankly, I’m doubtful, as I subscribe to The Sex and Cash Theory Hugh mentioned in his first book, Ignore Everybody (2009). That theory says that creative people need two kinds of jobs - the day job that pays the bills and the sexy, creative kind. But I will read with an open mind.

If you are keen to sample Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity, you can download a free pdf file at ChangeThis to read the first 26 tips.

3. Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Then there is Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, a sequel to her bestselling 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love. What got me interested in Committed was her moving talk at TED2009 - nothing to do with marriage though.

She spoke with conviction that it was possible to do creative work without going mad. She shared candidly on how she wrestled with fears of failure and perfectionist expectations in writing the new book - how she found role models in history and among contemporary artists. Catch her TEDTalk here.

What Matters Now

It is that time of the year to slow down, take stock and plan for a new year. What better way to do this than reading What Matters Now - a free e-book put together by Seth Godin. The e-book is a collection of ideas that matter to 70+ big thinkers. Each of them wrote about a value or concept dear to them. No matter what your interests are, you will find gems in there that resonate with you, things to think about and do. Download the pdf file here.

Restarting

Image credit: moleitau, via The eBook Test

See those wenches in the crown above? To me, they represent the royal values of discipline and hard work. This popular poster was created by Matt Jones. Read his story here and the larger story about similar well-designed slogans here.

Stepping Stones

Image via Wikipedia

Stones hold us back, take us forward,
keep us warm, leave us cold,
open our eyes, close them,
stand with us at the beginning of love
and at the end of it - all things that people do.

Source: Stepping stones to life’s mysteries, Janice Tay, The Straits Times, 21 Feb 09, p. A22

Information Anxiety

Image credit: TomNatt

Recently, I tasted information anxiety (hence no post for the past 3 months), caused by the continuous onslaught of articles, links, and updates from all over internet. This river of news can be personalised by using a RSS reader to harvest gems from blogs, social bookmarking sites, news portals, and other websites (I use Google Reader).

The upside is time saved, as you just need to visit one place for all the latest information from as many sites as you want. The downside is attention crash.

I shared Post-Punk Nerd’s lament at how his online habits caused him to read and reflect less often:

My use of the internet is, it turns out, abuse. I have traded away my brooding study in exchange for an all encompassing buckshot of skim reading, estimation, and chiding. I have not got very much to say anymore, but very many topics on which I feel required to speak. In high school I would spend whatever money I had ordering books, and I would wile away an entire weekend dissecting Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread. Now I struggle to get through an abridged edition of Marx’s Capital, and I spend no more than fifteen minutes on it at a time before I go running for my RSS Reader to see if XKCD updated. In my youth I spent time writing epic (and awful, as most youthful writing is) novels on reams of loose leaf paper. These days I have to force myself to sit down and drag a short story to a conclusion, if I get that far.

Clay Burell, at his Beyond School’s post, offered some insights into the nature of online reading:

Maybe it’s the daily “fast reading”: the Google Reader, the Stumbling Upon, the one-inch “Digging” and consumption of the latest hi-calorie Delicious thing.

But let’s be fair. These “filtered” publishings we daily (hourly, secondly) consume are often of high quality and high value. The problem comes in the fact that, taken together, they are disjointed, fragmentary, somewhat random, and almost always “contemporaneous” and “immediate” - connected to the day or the year, but by no means the longer river of time. And that makes our thoughts more like mayflies flitting on that river than old growths towering beside it.

Elsewhere, online literacy has been criticised to be a lesser form of reading. Anyway, there is only so much my attention can take. The solution is straightforward, but not easy. That is, to get out of the river. After all, the river of news coming at me is self-created.

Beacon of Hope

Image credit: Sam and boyfriend Bob gallery, Herald Sun

Sam, the koala bear in the photo above, drinking water with the aid of volunteer firefighter, Dave Tree. Sam’s story (esp. this YouTube video) captured worldwide attention, as Australia fought to overcome its deadly bushfires.

Hope grows stronger with love. Sam turns out to be a female koala and has bonded with Bob, another koala victim of the bushfires.


Reuters: Bob puts his paw around new friend and fellow fire survivor Sam as she recovers from her burns.

How Lincoln and Darwin Shaped the Modern World

Today is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Adam Gopnik, author of Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life (2009), had this to say about both men, and why their ideas matter:

With the usual compression of popular history, their reputations have been reduced to single words, mottoes to put beneath a profile on a commemorative coin or medal: “Evolution!” for one and “Emancipation!” for the other. Though, with the usual irony of history, the mottoes betray the men. Lincoln came late... and reluctantly to emancipation, while perhaps the least original thing in Darwin’s amazingly original work was the idea of evolution... We’re not wrong to work these beautiful words onto their coins, though: they were the engineers of the alterations. They found a way to make those words live. Darwin and Lincoln did not make the modern world. But, by becoming "icons" of free human government and slow natural change, they helped to make our moral modernity

The deepest common stuff the two men share, though, is in what they said and wrote—their mastery of a new kind of liberal language. They matter most because they wrote so well. Lincoln got to be president essentially because he made a couple of terrific speeches, and we remember him most of all because he gave a few more as president. Darwin was a writer who published his big ideas in popular books. A commercial publishing house published The Origin of Species in the same year that it published novels and memoirs, and Darwin’s work remains probably the only book that changed science that an amateur can still sit down now and read right through. It’s so well written that we don’t think of it as well written, just as Lincoln’s speeches are so well made that they seem to us as obvious and natural as smooth stones on the beach.

Source: Smithsonian Magazine, February 2009

Darwin’s native land celebrates his bicentenary through Darwin200. Wikipedia provides external links to his seminal book, On the Origin of Species (1859), in the public domain (PublicLiterature.Org has the full text with embedded audio).

For links to Lincoln-related information, see HyperLincs: Celebrating Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday online (great tip to check out iTunes U for its access to free lectures from universities).

New Year Resolutions

Image credit: ohdearbarb

I should have written this last month. Anyway, I’m dusting away the cobwebs on this blog to usher in some good cheer, despite the economic gloom.

And is it too late for making new year resolutions (NYRs)? Well, I’m no fan of NYRs. But after reading these bold, flossy, funny resolutions (in comments section, all because of a free book), I was inspired to write my own:

1. Join the slow blogging movement, as blogging is like exercise for the brain.

2. Catch up on 17 (to-date) unread books, before buying or borrowing more.

3. Revisit these beautiful places in Europe: Chamonix, Interlaken, Lake District (links to Flickr Search results).

4. Learn falconry at Ireland’s School of Falconry on the grounds of Ashford Castle, or in the Scottish Highlands.

Admittedly, the last two are on my someday/maybe list.

Sidenote: A someday/maybe list is to track things that you want to do, but do not have the resources or bandwidth to work on them in the short term. The idea came from the bestselling Getting Things Done (GTD) book by David Allen. However, this sort of list can morph into a procrastination or fantasy zone. To keep mine in lean shape, I turn to these useful ideas for pruning someday/maybe lists.

Books Read in 2008